Policy and research
developments in Australia
Gillian Whitehouse
Presentation for 9th annual LPR seminar
Ljubljana, Slovenia - 13-14 September, 2012
School of Political Science and International Studies
Outline of presentation
1) Recent policy developments in Australia
2) Policy evaluation contracted by the Australian
government: outline of research plan
3) Selected findings to date
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
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Baseline patterns pre-implementation of the Paid Parental
Leave scheme
Uptake estimates in the first year
Employer reactions
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1. Recent policy developments – Paid Parental Leave
scheme
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Paid Parental Leave scheme commenced payments from 1 January 2011 (Paid
Parental Leave Act given Royal Assent 14 July 2010; first applications accepted from
October 2010).
Object of the Act is to provide financial support to primary carers (mainly birth
mothers) of newborn and newly adopted children, in order to:
a.
allow them to take time off work to care for the child;
b.
enhance the health and development of birth mothers and children;
c.
encourage women to continue to participate in the workforce;
d.
promote equality between men and women and the balance between work
and family life.
Provides 18 weeks ‘Parental Leave Pay’ [PLP] indexed at the National Minimum Wage
(from July 2012, $AUD606.40 per week, $AUD10,915.20 for 18 weeks) – the
payment is taxable.
PLP can be taken anytime during the first 12 months following the birth or adoption,
and may overlap with any available employer-paid parental leave.
Scheme is government-funded, but payment is delivered by employers to eligible
long-term employees (otherwise via the Family Assistance Office)
Operates alongside the ‘Baby Bonus’ which, from September 2012, provides $5000 to
eligible families (those with an adjusted taxable income of up to $75,000) in 13
fortnightly instalments per birth or adoption, and has no work test restrictions.
Parents may opt for either scheme, with PLP more attractive financially for working
mothers intending to take more than 10 weeks leave.
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1. Recent policy developments – Paid Parental Leave
scheme, contd…
1) Scheme provides for pay (Parental Leave Pay) rather than leave:
parental leave (unpaid) and job protection are provided in the
National Employment Standards in the Fair Work Act.

Scheme is thus primarily located in the welfare system (administered through the Family
Assistance Office) with funding from government revenue; but it operates alongside the
industrial relations system, with industrial relations legislation providing the entitlement
to unpaid parental leave and job protection for leave takers.
2) Broad eligibility criteria – efforts to ensure flexibility and
inclusiveness led to the explicit inclusion of part-time and casual
employees, also contractors and self-employed. Restrictions include
a work test (330 hours in 10 of the past 13 months), income test
(individuals earning >$150,000 pa ineligible) and residency test
(limited to Australian residents).

Some mismatch of eligibility criteria compared with the statutory entitlement to unpaid
leave which requires recipients to be with the same employer for the 12 months prior to
the birth. Some parents may thus be entitled to Parental Leave Pay but not entitled to
parental leave.
3) Targeted primarily at birth or adoptive mothers…an eligible mother
can transfer some or all of her Parental Leave Pay to another
primary carer (e.g. her partner) provided that person also meets the
eligibility requirements.
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1. Recent policy developments – Dad and Partner
pay (DaPP)
1) Amendments to the Paid Parental Leave Act to include ‘Dad
and Partner Pay’ (DaPP) passed by the Australian parliament
27 June 2012; payments to commence from 1 January 2013.
2) Scheme offers two weeks’ pay at National Minimum Wage,
which can be taken anytime within the first year since the
child’s birth or adoption.
3) Available to fathers and partners, including adoptive parents
and same sex partners. Eligibility tests are the same as for PLP
but not dependent on the birth or adoptive mother’s
eligibility.
4) Must be taken while on unpaid leave, such as the unpaid
parental leave available under the Fair Work Act (as for PLP, it
is possible that some fathers/partners may be entitled to
DaPP but not entitled to unpaid parental leave).
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2. Policy evaluation contracted by the Australian
government: research team
Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community
Services and Indigenous Affairs has contracted a consortium led by Institute
for Social Science Research (ISSR), University of Queensland (UQ), to conduct
the policy evaluation. (A comprehensive evaluation is required under the
Parental Leave Act.)
The consortium includes a team of research staff in ISSR as well as academics
from across UQ and a number of Australian universities.
ISSR research team:
Bill Martin, Belinda Hewitt, Andrew Jones, Mara Yerkes, Laetitia Coles, Kristin
Davis, Emily Rose, Mark Western, Ning Xiang
UQ and other university academics:
Marian Baird, Janeen Baxter, Luke Connolly, Dorothy Broom, Guyonne Kalb,
Duncan McVicar, Lyndall Strazdins, Margaret Walter, Gillian Whitehouse,
Maria Zadoroznyj
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2. Policy evaluation contracted by the Australian
government: outline of research plan
Phase 1 (2010-11) involved baseline data collection in order to
inform subsequent evaluation of intermediate and ultimate
outcomes of the scheme, conducted prior to its commencement.
It comprised:
 a Baseline Mothers Survey (BaMS) of 2587 mothers of a child born in late
2009, approximately 12 months prior to the commencement of PPL
scheme payments, who were likely to have been eligible for PLP had it
been available at the time (conducted in November/December 2010, and
February 2011) – also surveyed were 1860 mothers who would not have
been eligible for PLP had it been available at the time;
 in-depth baseline interviews with 109 mothers from groups
underrepresented in the survey (e.g. Indigenous mothers, single
mothers, those in casual employment or self-employed);
 21 baseline interviews with employers or employer representatives to
collect information about current practices and attitudes to the new
policy.
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2. Policy evaluation contracted by the Australian
government: outline of research plan, contd…
Phase 2 (2011-12) focused on intermediate outcomes associated
with the implementation and initial operation of the scheme. It
comprised:
 a Policy Implementation study including interviews with 16 public servants
involved in administering the new policy, and associated documentary analysis;
 a Mothers Process Evaluation Study (MoPE) involving a survey of 901 mothers
with a child born in mid-2011 and eligible for PLP, plus in-depth interviews with a
subsample of 97 mothers and fathers (focusing on those who were casual or selfemployed prior to the birth, single mothers, Indigenous mothers and fathers who
took PLP)
 an Employers Implementation Phase Evaluation Study (EIPE) involving a survey of
a stratified sample of 501 employers who had made PLP payments to at least one
employee, plus in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 41 employers.
Phase 3 (2012-13) will focus on evaluating the intermediate, and (to the
extent possible) the ultimate outcomes of the scheme. It will comprise:
 a longitudinal survey of mothers of babies born in late 2011 (two waves of data
collection);
 a second cross sectional survey of employers;
 a set of interviews and focus groups with beneficiaries and employers.
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3. Selected findings to date
3.1 Baseline patterns pre-implementation of the PPL scheme
 Background context – trends in use of employer-paid
parental leave:

45% of BaMS mothers working more than 10 hours per week prior to the
birth reported usage of employer-paid leave in 2010-11, compared with
37% of a comparable group of mothers from the 2005 Parental Leave in
Australia Survey (PLAS) (Whitehouse et al., 2012).
 Indicators of extent to which PPL scheme would expand, and
enhance equity of, access to paid parental leave:


58% of BaMS sample were PPL eligible cf 34% of sample who believed
they had access to employer-paid parental leave (Phase 1 Report, pp.17,
19); majority of working women without access to employer-paid leave
would be PPL eligible (p.19);
Suggests increased access to paid leave among, e.g., Indigenous and single
mothers…among those eligible for PPL, these groups had lower reported
access to employer-paid leave than the sample as a whole (39% and 25%
respectively, compared with 46% for the overall sample) (Phase 1 report,
p.19).
Sources (in addition to PLAS and BaMS datasets):
Australian Government, Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (2012), Paid
Parental Leave Evaluation: Phase 1, Occasional Paper No.44, Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia.
Whitehouse, G., B. Hewitt, B. Martin and M.Baird (2012) Trends in paid parental leave usage in Australia: 2005-2010.
Paper presented at Australian Institute of Family Studies conference, 25-27 July.
School of Political Science and International Studies
3.1 Baseline patterns pre-implementation of the Paid Parental Leave
scheme, contd…
 Eligibility mismatch between PLP and statutory unpaid
leave:

BaMS data indicate that 5% of PLP eligible mothers were not eligible
for statutory unpaid parental leave on the basis of their work history;
this was the case for 12% of single mothers (Phase 1 Report, p.17, 27).
 Return to work patterns – trends pre-PPL:

PLAS (2005) indicated that among women who took leave and
returned to work within 15 months, around 70% returned to the same
job (same position with same employer); BaMS (2010-11) indicated
that among women who took leave and returned to work within 13
months, 78% returned to the same job (Phase 1 report, p. 44).
Sources (in addition to PLAS and BaMS datasets):
Australian Government, Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
(2012), Paid Parental Leave Evaluation: Phase 1, Occasional Paper No.44, Canberra, Commonwealth of
Australia.
Whitehouse, G., B. Hewitt, B. Martin and M.Baird (2012) Trends in paid parental leave usage in
Australia: 2005-2010. Paper presented at Australian Institute of Family Studies conference, 25-27 July.
School of Political Science and International Studies
3. Selected findings to date
3.2 Uptake figures in first year
 Just prior to International Women’s Day 2012, a government press
release announced that over 150,000 applications for PLP had been
received (http://www.jennymacklin.fahcsia.gov.au/node/1790 )
 Half of the mothers who had received payments under the PPL
scheme by January 2012 earned less than $43,000 in the year before
the birth or adoption of their baby
(http://www.jennymacklin.fahcsia.gov.au/node/1646 ), lending some
weight to the anticipation that the scheme would allow those least
likely to access employer-paid leave to access some paid leave.
 The Phase 2 mothers survey [MoPE] indicated that most mothers
eligible for PLP were also eligible for BB and that the majority chose
to take PLP

Those who took BB were more likely than those who took PLP to be single mothers,
relatively low earners, working fewer hours, casual or self-employed, working for very
small employers or to have resigned from their job at the time of the birth.
 Phase 2 research also indicated that nearly all PLP recipients took the
full 18 weeks available.
 Most mothers received the full PLP payment, with only a very few
families choosing to transfer some or all of their payment to the
mother’s partner.
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3. Selected findings to date
3.3 Employer reactions (primarily from the Phase 2
Employers Implementation Phase Evaluation Study [EIPE])
 Employers reported few difficulties implementing the PPL
scheme. Most agreed that:
 it was easy to register for PPL;
 it was easy to organise payments; and
 the information was accurate and easy to find.
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3.3 Employer reactions, contd…
1 Chi-square
test indicates that this is significantly different across employer Size at P<0.05.
Number of employers who indicated that they offer paid maternity/paid paternity/paid primary carers’
leave.
* Weighted data.
2
Source: Marian Baird, Alex Heron, Mara Yerkes, Jane Dickenson and Gillian Whitehouse (2012) Employer
Response to the New Paid Parental Leave Scheme in Australia: A catalyst for new employer policies? Paper
presented at the inaugural Work Family Research Network conference, New York, 14-16 June.
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3. 3 Employer reactions, contd…
1
39 employers who indicated that they did make changes to paid leave policies were asked this
question and could say yes to more than one of the above.
*Weighted data.
Source: Marian Baird, Alex Heron, Mara Yerkes, Jane Dickenson and Gillian Whitehouse (2012) Employer Response to
the New Paid Parental Leave Scheme in Australia: A catalyst for new employer policies? Paper presented at the inaugural
Work Family Research Network conference, New York, 14-16 June
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Conclusions
 Broadly positive outcomes to date, minimal
implementation difficulties
 Presence of scheme potentially contributing to changing
culture around parenthood and employment (all major
political parties now have schemes as part of their policy
platforms)
 Capacity to achieve ‘ultimate’ goals yet to be assessed
 See you at the 2013 Community, Work & Family
conference in Sydney…?
School of Political Science and International Studies
http://www.aomevents.com/CWFC2013
http://www.aomevents.com/CWFC2013